


if the moon should crumble (we'll be alright)

by theriveroflight



Category: RWBY
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Family Dynamics, Gen, Muteness, Relationship Study, Sign Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28649607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theriveroflight/pseuds/theriveroflight
Summary: Neo meansnew,and that feels right for her, remade after being left.
Relationships: Neopolitan & Roman Torchwick
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	if the moon should crumble (we'll be alright)

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Cap in the FGE exchange. They requested Roman, Neo, and found family, which is the sort of thing I've been wanting to write about for a while, so this was perfect. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Title, of course, from "Gold".
> 
> Warnings: _canon character death_ (this explores from their first meeting until just after Volume 3), crime
> 
> And a very special thank you to Bels via Discord for beta reading!

“Kiddo?” She looks up, and the person standing in front of her isn’t exactly what she expected based on their voice, but he seems to be older than her by a fair few years — close to a decade, she imagines.

“Are you okay?”

She motions to her throat, trying desperately to convey that she can’t speak. She’s never had to explain it before. Because she’s never been able to, she’s never spoken a word. The function doesn’t exist in her mind. She can still hear, she has limited amounts of the ability to read — she’s only five, after all. Everything she knows she picked up from the people she called family. 

“Um, nod or shake your head?” He seems to have the message, at least.

She shakes her head in dissent. He sticks out a hand to help her up. She takes it and he pulls her up.

“I’m Roman.”

She goes to fingerspell her name, and realizes two things.

One, this Roman probably doesn’t know how to make hand-words.

Two, she doesn’t  _ like  _ the name that they gave her. 

“What should I call you?”

She shrugs. There are a few things that people who don’t understand hand-words will, and that’s one of them.

He looks at her hair (the hair that she had always been asked to hide) and then at a sign for an ice cream shop.

“How do you like Neo? Short for Neopolitan?”

Neo.

She nods, smiling.

“Look, I don’t care about returning you. Whoever you’re running from probably doesn’t want you back. I know plenty about that.”

And they walk out together, going towards a hideout in an abandoned shed.

“This is my place. I have a separate place from the gang — I don’t want to live with them.” He rolls his eyes.

Oh, so he’s a  _ criminal.  _ The kind of person her parents would call words she isn’t supposed to hear.

She nods in understanding, and then mimes out writing.

“Aren’t you a little young to be writing?”

She holds up five fingers, huffing.

He puts his hands up, some sort of…way to say that he gets it and isn’t going to argue. He hands her a pen and pad. “Best I’ve got right now.”

_ How to spell my name? _

Her handwriting has started to become neater because she uses it more, but it’s still large and a little messy, the letters still unfamiliar.

He writes it on the paper.

“It’s a little different, but ‘Neo’ means ‘new’ and because I was giving you a new name…”

_ It works,  _ she writes. She likes it.

“I’m glad it does.”

_ I can also handspeak. _

“Handspeak? Oh!” He pauses. “You mean, sign language?”

_ I don’t know what the real word is,  _ she writes.  _ I think so. _

“Okay. Can you teach me?”

She nods.  _ Letters first! _

And perhaps  _ this  _ is what happiness is, sitting in a shed-turned-house with someone who’s essentially adopted her.

* * *

They can communicate effortlessly through sign language now — Roman still has to occasionally fingerspell a word he doesn’t know, but she doesn’t know every sign in existence either.

He helps her unlock her Aura, and he asks her if she wants to train to unlock her Semblance. He confesses that he chose not to — he just doesn’t care what it is, and he doesn’t need it for what he does.

Roman Torchwick is a name that  _ means  _ something now, her somewhere around eleven and him somewhere in his twenties. They’ve both sort of lost track of time, but it’s been easy to keep track of Neo’s timeline because she was young when she came, when Roman got to her.

There’s also rumors of a child riding his coattails, but she doesn’t want to prove them right quite yet.

She trains and trains and one day she feels something in her snap.

When Roman comes home, he calls and calls for her, but she’s right there.

She snaps her fingers.

“Wait, were you there all along?” He signs along with his speaking, still practicing even after years and years after starting.

She nods in return.  _ It's my Semblance,  _ she signs, spelling out  _ Semblance. _

“I think there’s more to it than that,” he answers.

_ We'll see later,  _ she signs.  _ I'm tired. _

“This is great, Neo!” He ruffles her hair. Neither of them are particularly  _ touchy,  _ saving it for special occasions; she ducks out from under it. "It’ll be really great to have you alongside me.”

She’s been looking forward to her first mission. Her first heist. She’s had Hush for a while — just waiting for the first time she can use it.

She nods, firm in her choice. It  _ will  _ be great.

* * *

The first heist is for money, as all of them are — they target a department store, a big business that can afford to lose money.

She gets them in by disguising both of them with her Semblance. She’s still working out how exactly it works — invisibility is one thing, but she can also leave  _ images  _ of herself that shatter upon touch, and she can leave them in her place as long as she’s invisible when she does it, letting her get away.

Neo distracts the clerks — it isn’t what she  _ wants  _ to do, but she asks questions over notepad, and asks if  _ anyone  _ in the store knows how to sign. 

She gets a response, and they get a good conversation going before the alarm starts going off.

The employees all run towards the back. She runs out the door, going towards where she and Roman first entered.

_ Go,  _ she signs, and places her hand on the sack to disguise it as a messenger bag.  _ I take. _

“You know your illusions aren’t that strong yet,” he whispers.

She reverts back to how she usually looks.  _ They won't suspect this,  _ she smirks as she signs.

“Alright.” And he starts walking away. She walks in the opposite direction, and they both know the rendezvous.

She reaches their little shed before he does.

“How was that for a heist?” he asks, and she smiles, taking the illusion off the sack. “You going to count what we’ve got? I didn’t get everything, but got quite a bit.”

She rolls her eyes, but starts counting anyways.

***

She’s still working out the kinks of fighting, but Roman spars with her, and she fights until she’s  _ untouchable.  _ Until it becomes  _ very hard  _ for anyone to land a hit, where she starts to get a reputation on the wrong side of Vale — the girl with the umbrella, Roman’s little protege, some others that are compliments and some that are thinly veiled insults.

But still no one knows her name. And that extra layer of secrecy  _ helps,  _ but it also hurts. She wants to be as notorious as her…older brother? Adoptive father?

_ Family. _

The underground will eventually know her name.

* * *

Cinder Fall brings along two proteges of her own — Emerald Sustrai and Mercury Black.

Neo is unimpressed by them at first. She is forced to be with them, but they keep to themselves, and they’re stuck in Mistral at Haven where they’ve managed to get the Headmaster to take in some criminals.

They masquerade as fourth-year students — the closest to a median. Cinder’s older than them, somewhere between her and Roman in age.

It’s been over ten years since she ran, she believes. She suspects she’s slightly older than Mercury and Emerald, and both of them are eighteen as they told her — the age of a second year student. So she’s probably somewhere around twenty, she doesn’t know for certain.

Team CMSN is missing its leader for a few weeks until they all can fly to Vale and join them.

It feels good to be back in Vale. Her home turf, the place where she belongs.

The Breach goes on, even with an interruption from that one particularly precocious Beacon team. She remembers the blonde who caused her illusion to shatter, and selects her as an opponent — she’s  _ playing,  _ really. Fighting her is fun, because the blonde is all direct, and Neo can dance around her with ease.

Still, the students working together manage to avert true catastrophe. No matter. The best is yet to come.

She fights, and it feels  _ good.  _ She doesn’t get to do much in the tournament, but that doesn’t matter. The tournament only matters because they need Emerald to ruin it. Neo misses her weapon, but she understands — the umbrella is just too recognizable. Her Semblance isn’t, though — so she makes blades from it and has to remake them every time they shatter. It drains her Aura, so she’s the first one out of the running. She’s not particularly interested in that, though. They’ve already planned it out — Mercury and Emerald will be going onto the doubles round. Cinder’s been found out by Beacon staff and her style would be too recognizable, and Neo is a known criminal.

Really, it just makes sense. She understands the plan.

* * *

The Fall of Beacon is much more catastrophic than she could have ever imagined. It is beauty, but a sharp, rugged beauty that not many would recognize.

She fights who Roman calls “Little Red” atop an airship with him, and they almost win until she opens Neo’s umbrella on her and she  _ watches  _ Roman get eaten by a Grimm.

She tries to save him. But she can’t. He was already gone by the time she made it back. She claims his hat from what’s left. And the Grimm is dead that put him there.

She wants  _ revenge. _

Because her home, her family, her everything was  _ stolen  _ from her.

The sharpened tip on her umbrella drags against the ground as she walks away from the shell of Beacon Academy.

She knows their plans — Haven is next.

So to Mistral she will go.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! You can talk to me about my fics on my writing Tumblr @beunforgotten and talk about more generic things on my main Tumblr @alto-tenure.


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